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Ties with the Traditional Values Movement

A more narrowly focused group of Black conservatives comes
out of the right-wing traditional values movement
within the Black community. This group merits
special attention. Notwithstanding the occasional secular group, it is
primarily made up of Black Christian fundamentalist groups,
and its followers differ significantly from Black conservative intellectuals and
bureaucrats. Unlike the former, the traditional values people are part
of a movement and, as such, engage in constituency-building activities.
Whereas conservative Black intellectuals and political officials uniformly
scoff at Afrocentrism, some of the Black fundamentalist
groups adhere to strongly Afrocentric orientations. Indeed, the combination
of hard-core Christian fundamentalism with Afrocentrism contains the
potential for schisms within Black Christian fundamentalism and
certainly with the notoriously racist elements
of the white Christian fundamentalist movement as a whole.

The larger, predominantly white traditional values movement
is well placed to receive more attention as the right gears up to fight
the Clinton Administration's policies on abortion,
AIDS, and sex education in
schools. Indeed, as the right-wing Christian
fundamentalist and traditional values movements
continue to organize to overtake the Republican Party at
the local level, and as their influence on US politics spreads, those
Black Americans affiliated with the positions of the traditional values
movement are positioned to garner as much attention in the 1990s as the
Black conservative intellectuals did
in the 1980s. This is particularly true given that the African American community,
while traditionally liberal on political issues, is also traditionally
conservative on social issues, such as abortion rights and homosexual
rights.

Dr. Mildred Jefferson, a physician who was the
first Black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School,
has long been a star in the traditional values movement.
Dr. Jefferson was a founder and former chairman of the National Right
to Life Committee, and served three terms as
the organization's president. She is currently chair of the National
Right to Life Crusade. Jefferson is joined by
several other lesser lights who are asserting themselves as movement
spokespeople: Los Angeles school teacher Ezola
Foster, Rev. Cleveland Sparrow in
Washington, DC, Greg Keath in
Michigan, and Rev. Edward V. Hill in
Los Angeles.

Keath is the leader of two groups, Rescue Black America (RBA)
and the Alliance for Family, both staunch opponents of abortion.
Rescue Black America uses tactics similar to those used by anti-abortion
groups such as Operation Rescue. Like Keath,
Washington, DC minister Cleveland Sparrow is
also adamantly opposed to abortion, but his organization, the National
Coalition for Black Traditional Values (NCBTV),
increasingly is targeting homosexual civil rights issues
and AIDS anti-discrimination laws.
Sparrow was formerly head of the Moral Majority chapter
in the District of Columbia, and is gathering increasing political clout
in the white conservative establishment. Sparrow
aligned himself with Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC)
and Representative William Dannemeyer (R-CA)
in an effort to overturn a Washington, DC, City Council ordinance that
bars insurance companies from refusing coverage to people who test positive
for the HIV virus.

Ezola Foster's Los Angeles-based
Black Americans for Family Values (BAFV) also
opposes homosexual rights and AIDS anti-discrimination laws,
as well as a woman's right to abortion, AIDS
education, and sex education in
schools. Arguing in 1988 that the issue was whether
Republicans want to send voters the
message that "it is the party of the family. . .[or] the
party of perverts," Foster has repeatedly supported efforts by Representative
William Dannemeyer and other right-wing Republicans
to get the California GOP to ban gay Republican
clubs from the party.

Edward V. Hill is pastor of the 2,000-member Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church in
the Watts section of Los Angeles. He is a close
friend of Jerry Falwell and was a member of Falwell's
now-defunct Moral Majority. Hill once dismissed
protesters picketing his church during a Falwell visit, saying the protesters
were "Muslims, homosexuals,
and abortionists."